St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1887-09-10
QUEENS OF HOME.
SOLOMON LONG AGO SET FORTH
wOMAN'S PLACE.
Rev. T. De Witt Talmage's Sermon at The
Hamptons-The Female's Position Higher
in the Scale Than That of Man-Ever
Ready With Comfort and Tenderness.

THE HAMPToNs, September 4.-The
Rev. T. De Witt Talmage's text to-day
was from Solomon's Song, chapter vi,
v. 8; "There are threescore queens"
Following is the sermon in full:
So Solomon, by one stroke, set forth
the imperial character of true Chris
tian woman. She is not slave: not
hireling, not a subordinate, but queen ;
and in my text Solomon sees sixty of
these helping to make up the royal
pageant of Jesus. In a former sermon
| showed you that crown and courtly
attendants, and imperial wardrobe were
not necessary to make queen; but that
graces of the heart and life will give
coronation to any woman. | showed
you at some length that woman's posi-
ton was higher in the world than mans,
and that although she had often been
denied the right of suffrage, she always
did vote, and always would vote, by her
influence; and that her chief desire
ought to be that she should have grace
rightly to rule in the dominion which
she has already won. I began an enum-
Grafton of some of her rights, and this
morning I resume the subject.
In the first place, woman has the
special and the superlative right-not
again going back to what | have already
said-woman has the special and super
lative right of blessing and comforting
the sick.
What land, what street, what house,
has not felt the smitings of disease !?
Tens of thousands of sick-beds! What
shall we do with them? Shall man, with
his rough hand and clumsy foot go
stumbling around the sick-room trying
to soothe the distracted nerves, and allie
viate the pains of the tossing patient?
The young man at college may scott at
the idea of being under maternal influ-
ences; but at the first blast of the
typhoid fever on his cheek, he says:
Where is mother?" Walter Scott wrote
partly in satire and partly in compliment
when he said:
y woman, IN our hours OF ease,
Uncertain, coy and hard to please:
When pain and anguish wiring the brow,
A ministering angel thou.
think the most pathetic passage in all
the Bible is the description of the lad
who went out to the harvest-ield of
Shunem and got misunderstanding
his hands on his temples and crying out
"Oh, my head my head !" and they said:
"Carry him to his mother" And then
the record Isl "He sat on her knees till
noon, and then died" 1t is an awful
thing to be i'll away from home in
strange hotel, once in awhile men coming
in to look at you, holding their hand over
contagion. How roughly they turn you
you long for the ministries of home! l
of the brightest of homes, for several
West. A telegram came at mid
far away from home. By express train
but they went too late. He feared not
~ OLC, Du0 1V w bS al Oil dSOAy w lIfC
until his family got there. He tried to
while longer. He said, II am willing to
tered, the eyes closed, and the heart
midnight-wife and daughters going
westward; lifeless remains of husband
and father coming eastward Oh, it was
q cod v,itif,11 ha1p I
When we are sick we want to be sick at
home. When the time comes for us to die,
we want to die at home. The room may be
very humble, and the faces that look into
ours may be very plain; but who cares
for that? Loving hands to battle the
temple. Loving voices to speak good |
cheer. Loving lips to read the comfort
ing promises of Jesus. In our last dread |
full war, men cast the cannon; men fash
Toned the musketry men cried to the |
host: Forward, march p men hurled |
their battalions on the sharp edges of the |
enemy, crying: charge! charger but
woman scraped the lint; woman admin
istered the cordials; woman watched
by the dying couch; woman wrote
the last message to the home
circle; woman wept at the soli-
tary burial attended by herself and four
men with spade. We greeted the gen.
eral home with brass bands, and trium-
phal arches, and wild huzzas; but the
story is too good to bewritten anywhere,
save in the chronicles of Heaven, of Mrs.
Brady, who came down among the sick
in the swamps of the Chickahominy; of
Annie Ross, in the cooper-shop hospital;
of Margaret Breckenridge, who came to
men who had been for weeks with their
wounds undressed, some of them frozen
to the ground, and when she turned. them
over those that had an arm left waved it
and filed the air with their "hurrah;" of
Mrs. Hodge, who came from Chicago
with blankets and with pillows, until the
men shouted, Three cheers for the
Christian commission God bless the
women at home" then sitting down TO
take the last message, "Tell my wife not
to fret about me, but to meet me in
Heaven; tell her to train up the boys
whom we have loved so well; tell her
we shall meet again in the good land;
tell her to bear my loss like the Christian
wife of Christian soldier;" and of Mrs.
Shelton, into whose face the GONZALES
cent soldier looked and said: Your
grapes and cologne cured me-" Men did
their work with shot, and shell, and car
bine, and howitzer; women did their
work with socks. and slippers. and ban